Friday, February 25, 2011

My 9th Anniversary of Acknowledging the Divine in Others by Claire Candy Hough

Soon I will be celebrating a very eventful anniversary. You see it was April of 2003 when I received my Master/Teacher Degree in Reiki. The very next week, I applied for my business license, bought a massage table and I became a Healing Practitioner of Energy Medicine and Intuitive Counseling.This was joyfully supported by the Universe; as clients and referrals easily flowed through my door.When I look back to those early days of my Practice, I remember my clients walking in to my healing room and they would comment how welcoming, clear and peaceful the energies made them feel. After filling out a form, they would lie on the massage table and begin to feel the recharging, relaxing Reiki energies calming their nervous systems and rebalancing them.In 2003, Reiki was starting to be used more and more in hospitals, hospices and cancer centers. With the National Institute of Health and the World Health Organization classifying it as ‘Energy Medicine”, the benefits were shown to be amazing.By replenishing the energy within the body which had been compromised and diminished by tension and illness, Reiki was shown to reduce stress, provide pain relief, charge the immune system and increase the body’s natural ability to heal itself.These benefits were evident in my sessions; as clients experienced not only pain relief, but they felt at peace, totally relaxed and clear as if someone or something had vacuumed away all their inner fog. They left my practice floating out the door with a renewed sense of calm and balance.

Some weeks later, I received a call from these very clients stating that, all the wonderful feelings from my session had dissipated and they needed to come back for another restorative energy boost.In the following weeks I noticed that I had this very same conversation with several clients. After hearing this repeatedly, I really began to take studied notice of what God, Angels, the Universe were trying to tell me.My first thought was, “What the H*ll are these clients doing???” After all, my sessions relieved their pain and brought them back to a place of wholeness and balance. Trying to figure it out, I turned my attention to the way that I chose to comport my own life. I thought, I don’t need to go to another Healing Practitioner to keep my energies flowing, positive, bright, healthy and happy. In practicing the art of living a life of conscious awareness- physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually-I always choose positive, loving, non-judgmental thoughts, words and feelings in my heart. These high vibrational energies continually fill me with such beautiful positive energies that they are like a well-spring of abundance filling me with joy and health. These energies not only nourish me, but they also spill out into the world and uplift everyone that I meet.

Being very fresh and young, I was certain that I was being of best service by “saving” and “fixing” my clients by replenishing their diminished energies.After all, I had been well-trained, and was accomplished in the healing arts. With my knowledge and application of Reiki at their disposal, all they needed to do was to be lifted energetically and they would be ‘healed’.(I am so embarrassed to think of how naïve I was to think this way. But I guess that is where the expressions ‘impetuous youth’ and the ‘wisdom of experience” come from.)

I began to delve deeper into exactly what it was that I was actually providing for my clients.

After some careful thought, it dawned on me that without the acknowledgement of what these clients had chosen to focus their attentions on and the non-beneficial choices that they had continually made in their lives, it really didn’t matter how extraordinary the Reiki energy sessions were. In the end, these clients all went back to their ‘normal’ lives and all the beautiful, rebalancing, peaceful energies would not be sustained; as they did not realize their contribution to their emotional or physical un-wellness. The Angels then showed me a vision of a colander, as clients were allowing all the positive energies to sieve out of their lives by not taking accountability and refocusing their energies.

It was then, that I decided to begin the sessions by asking each client to tell me the story of their life. As they spoke, my Intuitive Counseling would begin; as I showed the client their life from a higher perspective. With this Angel’s view, they could clearly see their negative habits and destructive patterns and how their very own thoughts, words, feelings and actions had perpetuated negativity and lead them to emotional and physical un-wellness. (Actually, what they began to see was how powerful and limitless they were to have carefully crafted and constructed quite a negative life.) With this limitless and boundless ability to create this kind of life, they became aware that they could also-in any given moment-begin to create a new and very different ‘reality’ for themselves. They began to understand that all their life, they had chosen a palette of paints containing dark blacks and grays and browns to paint their reality. With this new accountability and acknowledgment of what their previous ‘color’ choices had brought them, they became very excited as they began to choose very different color choices to form their new pallet of paints. Consciously choosing uplifting, light filled paints from their new pallet, their life very quickly began to change and reflect their new brighter color choices. Once the client consciously understood their contribution to their diminished ‘life force energy’, we then spoke about the individualized practical tools that they could follow to keep their energies positive and joy filled.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I was really helping my clients to do-and the most crucial component of the session that was so desperately missing- was to restore their faith in the sound of their own voice. In this way, sometimes for the very first time in their lives, they would have the opportunity to be acknowledged and listened to.By this one, seemingly simple act of demonstrating to my clients how much I truly loved and cared about them and acknowledged to them that they had the right to be heard, their overwhelming cathartic releases were extraordinary.

From this one realization, my sessions provided- and to this day-provide a haven of acknowledging the Divine in my clients.

Each and every one of us is an aspect of the Divine in human form. Throughout my journey as a Healing Practitioner, the more that I choose to truly listen with my loving heart and provide a safe sanctuary for others to finally peer out from behind their self-made mask of denying who they really are, myself and the client begin to experience the miracle of the renewal of the Divine within ourselves.